Content Tagged ‘misc’

In case you missed our Facebook post last week, we wanted to share a great article on what the nonfiction editor from our sister publication, Ecotone, looks for in an essay.

“As nonfiction editor, I search for work that adroitly balances objective reporting and subjective discovery, essays and stories that show an equal respect for the internal and the external. I look for writers who aren’t afraid to probe the world around them while simultaneously mining the world within; who are eager to physically hunt for the story, but also know when to bring it home, to employ their own reasoning and their own bias and their own interiority to connect on a more human level.”

—Carson Vaughn, “On Balance” from Essay Daily

Be sure to check out the full article, and if you’re still searching for helpful information about submitting to a literary journal, former Lookout intern and fiction editor Nicola DeRobertis-Theye suggests five tips for writing your cover letter.

While National Novel Writing Month is a few weeks away, a little mental prep never hurt. Stop making excuses and start writing. Chronicle Books has the top five excuses people make when copping out on NaNoWriMo. You know what helps our staff? Coffee. Lots of coffee.

“The reader of literary genre fiction should feel the structure in her body, particularly with short stories. It’s a recognizable rhythm, it’s a shimmering in one’s veins as one moves from opening scene to well-placed background information to the next, more tense scene to that special, oh-so-revealing flashback about the time our protagonist ran over his rubber horse, or the time he knew he was in love with a real horse, or the time he — oh you see what I mean. In the genre of literary fiction, this structure must lead to a moment of revelation, suggested but never explained.”

The Millions has gathered a great list of some literary fiction signifiers (the above is Scene, Exposition, Scene, Flashback, Scene, Cue Epiphany), including The Long Title and Adultery.

Here’s a little perspective: In 1939, gas cost 10 cents a gallon at the pump. A movie ticket set you back 20 cents. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the year’s bestselling hardcover book, was $2.75. For a nation suffering 20 percent unemployment, books were an impossible expense.

Believe it or not, Generation Y might just be the most bibliophilic generation alive, according to a new consumer study. Gen Y – those born between 1979 and 1989 – spent the most money on books in 2011, knocking the longtime book-buying leaders, baby boomers, from the top spot, according to the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review.